I think I'll keep her

Today when I picked Elle up from school she was sad because she wanted to stay and eat lunch with her "all day school friends".  To make her happy I took her to lunch at her new favorite place, a fancy burger restaurant right here in town.

When we were seated Elle was thrilled when she realized she would have one entire side of the booth all to herself.  I only had to remind her about fifty times to stop bouncing on the seat.

She requested that we split an appetizer of meatballs on a stick.  As I was ordering it a straw wrapper flew across the table and hit me in the face.  When I looked up Elle was sitting with her straw in her mouth and shocked look on her face.  I think she surprised herself with her good aim.  I didn't get mad because I'm the one that taught her to do that in the first place.

When our meatballs arrived Elle threw up her hands and cheered "Woohoo!  Neatballs!"

I cut the meatballs into pieces for Elle.  She decided that the bison was her favorite and that she also liked the lamb but that it made her a little sad to eat a baby sheep.  That didn't stop her from nearly licking the plate clean when she was done.

As we waited for our sandwiches to come we played a word game.  We went through the alphabet and Elle tried to name a food that started with each letter.  She was pleased with how she could use our appetizers in the game.  Lamb for L, bison for B, Kobe beef for K and neatballs for N.  H was the only letter she had trouble with but later she went back said "himachi".  I'm pretty sure she meant "jicama".

As we ate our sandwiches Elle paused to announce "I am just so cute today!"  Then, after a brief pause to nibble on a pickle (dipped in my chili of course) she said "You're so cute today too Mama."

In case anyone is wondering what we're going to do about the all day preschool program we're going to skip it for now.  We may revisit it during the last month or two of school as a "getting ready for kindergarten" option but that's a long way off.

For right now though I really like having her around.  She likes being with me.  I think she still gets a lot out of being with me.  She's my sidekick, my shadow, my little buddy.  I'm not ready to give that up yet.  Soon enough she'll grow tired of being around me all the time.  I have to soak up all the togetherness I can while she'll still let me.

And clearly I'm going to have to make neatballs for dinner more often.